I know this post is destined to get me several ticks in the ‘can’t you take a joke’ square, but I am going to post it anyway because quite frankly there are some subjects towards which I am indeed a 100% humourless feminist.

The above ad features Eva Longoria (actress) offering a lift to two stranded men on a highway. The ‘story’ goes like this:

Eva: hey guys, need a ride?
Men nod and pant and jump in car
Eva: I’m sorry guys, I can’t take you all the way.

The men share a look and then front seat guy twiddles his pepsi-o-meter, thus manipulating the situation and causing the car to run out of petrol – woo hoo!
Eva: oh no, we’re out of gas, looks like we’re here for the night
[so, yay! I can take you ‘all the way’]

Now, this is where the Australian version of the ad finishes, as back seat guy congratulates himself and has a deep swig of magic Pepsi, and it is certainly enough to cause my outrage. But for extra creepyness the version of the ad I found on youtube and embedded above has an extra line where front seat guy gives a way creepy look and works his pepsi-o-meter even harder causing Eva to say: Now let’s get you out of those wet clothes.

Now, I get that this is a made up story, and that there is no magical pepsi-o-meter that a man might use to manipulate circumstances so that a woman might have sex with him, but unfortunately there definitely *are* substances that men *do* use to coerce women into sex against their will, and using such substances, whether magic Pepsi, alcohol or Rohypnol to circumvent the will of another person is rape. This creepy fantasy is just not far enough away from 1 in 3 women’s reality to make it the humorous ‘what if’ that I can only imagine Pepsi were aiming for.

I just can’t believe that anyone thought that making this ad was a good idea.